


last impressions

by orphan_account



Category: Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Introspection, Suicidal Thoughts, Wakes & Funerals, and georg is a piece of shit but who cares tbh, basically the teens are depressed: a character study, implied trans martha and moritz, the kids arent fucking alright
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-22 21:43:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10705728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Ten teenagers shouldn't have to be faced with attending an eleventh teenager's funeral.Or, there are daffodils at Moritz's funeral, and the kids think over them.





	last impressions

**Author's Note:**

> hello ;; this is really a bit of a vent work of mine- so you can tell it got a bit sloppy at the end. but i did put the tgs there FOR. A. REASON. csa, absive homes, and suicide are all mentioned very much in this story and are central themes. self harm and eating disorders are also vaguely referrenced, so be safe dudes <3 <3
> 
> EDIT: i went back and fixed any formatting/grammar errors i could find- i wrote this at like 2 am, so they were only expected lol

**I-**

 

Thea is the brave one in her family. Mama is too complacent, Father is more rage than courage, and Hanschen lays low and sneaks about his work like a snake.

 

Thea is the brave one.

 

She’s brave enough to walk forward slowly, evenly, and pick up a single flower from the ground. The flower--she can’t remember the name, maybe Anna would--is white, with delicate leaves already curling in on themselves, browning slightly. It’s been mishandled, the stem squeezed too tight at some point by the florist and left on the damp earth for too long.

 

It’s not beautiful, nor what she would want on her grave.

 

But she’s at the grave of a dead boy she never really knew, of a dead boy she never really would know, and somehow the wilted leaves and the damp, sappy stem are entirely appropriate.

 

She walks respectfully up to the casket, not sparing either of the Stiefels a glance as she peers down. Moritz Stiefel looking back up at her with skin too pale and clothes too large. He looks unnatural, and she can’t focus on his face for too long without feeling as if something’s creeping up within her. 

 

She turns the flower loose, hands shaking. Nothing happens, nothing significant. It’s just a flower, laying on top of a dead boy. Her head is held up bravely towards the heavens when she walks away.

 

Thea has always been the brave one.

 

**II-**

 

It’s an inside joke amongst their friends, that wherever Thea will go, Anna will follow. They’re like two maple seeds, tied together by hands or hair-braiding or matching ribbons, falling slowly and peacefully together.

 

Anna bites the inside of her cheek. This isn’t slow, or peaceful. It feels like life is forcing her through it, each day a chore and more of a blur than the last. Yesterday, she bought her first black dress to attend the Stiefel boy’s funeral. The day before, she was told that Moritz from Sunday School had committed a  _ grave, grave sin, sit down Mäuschen _ .

 

Three days ago, an airhead who would sneak her and Thea chocolates killed himself in the woods.

 

She bites her cheek harder, tasting iron but not stopping. Mariana is cheerful, and bubbly, and a fan of floral dresses and pink ribbons. 

 

Mariana does not cry.

 

As soon as Thea turns away from the casket, head tilted high and eyes empty of much else, Anna steps forward. Her sensible flats are difficult to walk in when the ground is muddy, but if she staggers in her step no one blames her. The pile of flowers is halfway between her and the casket, laying there innocuously, and Anna is overcome with emotion for what feels like the thousandth time in the last days.

 

Daffodils, white and a bit wilted, are what were chosen to honor Moritz. 

 

Anna’s mother is a florist, she knows the language of flowers. Daffodils, symbolising rebirth, new beginnings, and life after death.

 

She’s smiling softly through whatever deep, core-eating feeling is consuming her when she drops the second daffodil onto the dead boy’s sweater.

 

**III-**

 

Ernst is wringing the flower in his hands, and he can practically  _ hear  _ Hanschen scolding him for fidgeting even though Hanschen isn’t beside him ( _ ohGod why isn’t he right here whyisn’tMoritzstillhere- _ ).

 

The underside of his arms hurt when he looks down into the casket ( _ Moritz’scasket- _ ).

 

He remembers a Mortiz from just last week, a Moritz nervously tearing up the edge of a homework assignment they were both struggling with, stuttering out nervously that the marks on his wrist weren’t a big deal, really, just sometimes his dad would drag him to his room a little roughly.

 

Or hold him like a vice during long, long lectures.

 

Or slap his wrist against the wall in warning.

 

Or twist his arm a little while shouting.

 

Or anything, anything,  _ everything _ .

 

Ernst hadn’t been able to respond like he should have ( _ shouldhavetoldshouldhavedonesomethinganything _ **_everything_ ** ). Ernst didn’t know his father, didn’t understand a household without only mothers and sisters and brothers who kissed his cheek when he came home instead of spitting in his face.

 

He was shocked, mouth dropping open slightly while Moritz stumbled over excuses on excuses on excuses ( _ heshouldn’thavelistenedtothemheshouldhavetolddonesomethingwhydidn’thedosomething _ ). Ernst could have done anything more useful than pulling Moritz into a wet hug he nearly flinched away from, he was sure of it. Moritz had just latched onto Ernst after a moment’s hesitation, clinging to him like a dying man but holding his breath as if calming himself. 

 

Now, Moritz had been more than a dying man, and he was much more than just holding his breath, but Ernst still feels his cheeks get wet ( _ weak _ ) and warm ( _ guilty _ ) when he spots the ugly mark on his friend’s cheekbone, purple and blue and surrounding a neat cut that was curved like the edge of a ring.

 

(There’s a voice, now, telling Ernst that if he had listened to Moritz more, if he hadn’t been so weak, if he hadn’t been so _idioticuselesssentimentallstupid_ , then Moritz wouldn’t be lying in a coffin with his arms crossed and his cheek coloured in morbid shades)

 

The only useful fucking thing Ernst can do now is give his friend a flower.

 

**IV-**

 

Hanschen sat next to Stiefel in Algebra, last year, and was barely close to him beyond daily arguments that ensued from there.

 

Hanschen had been partnered with Stiefel for an analysis of  _ Julius Caesar  _ three weeks ago, and it was quite possibly the most miserable day of his life.

 

Other than that, Hanschen hadn’t known Stiefel. He hadn’t heard him laugh, or actually say anything of substance until around last week. Stiefel had always been anxious, beat out by the system and hanging on by whatever threads he could find, and Hanschen… didn’t want to be blind to it, like Gabor forced himself to be. Hanschen saw Stiefel dangling from a cliff’s edge, and was brave enough to admit what no one else would.

 

Moritz had been straining for far longer than anyone with a conscience wanted to admit, and since no one had helped him up, he had chosen to fall.

 

Hanschen was okay with that. Maybe that should worry him, the fact that he was staring down at the battered body of a schoolmate who didn’t deserve any of this. Hanschen could look at the bruise on Stiefel’s cheek and the clothes that might have fit him last month, but surely not after days of skipping school lunch to do God knows what and breakfasts missed because he overslept and dinners lost because he didn’t deserve them-- he could look at all of these things and safely say that no one deserved them.

 

Moritz Stiefel is dead, and Hanschen can still read him like an open book. At least Hanschen hadn’t decided to ignore the suicidal elephant in the room alongside Gabor. He had genuinely tried to be a bit kinder to Stiefel, to argue with him less and slip him answers more.

 

Some people just didn’t want to be saved, once they put their mind to something.

 

Hanschen dropped the flower. Moritz Stiefel was surprisingly stubborn.

 

**V-**

georg doesnt attend the funeral.

 

he can see it, though, in his minds eye.

 

otto works up the nerve to comfort anna. hanschen and ernst walk out hand in hand. ilse pulls wendla away from melchior. the casket is lowered. maybe two, three people cry.

 

herr stiefel is the one georg cant picture in his minds eye. maybe he cries. maybe he rejects moritz. maybe he doesnt show at all.

 

georg had told moritz that he would be shocked if moritz could touch the trigger without fainting.

 

moritz had done more than faint.

 

georg doesnt attend the funeral.

 

**VI-**

 

Wendla had once asked Mama if it was a sin to want to die. She sometimes felt trapped in her body, the urge to just stop with the dresses and the hair and the breathing too strong to feel much of anything else. It had made her curious, simply, to death. The Other Side. Heaven.

 

Wendla wasn’t curious anymore. Moritz Stiefel had found out for her. He had trodden through the woods like old times, but this time he had a gun instead of a tree branch. This time, he wasn’t fighting anything anyone could see or hear.

 

She remembered the haystack, with Melchior and such strange and terrifying things, and then the sound of gunshot and birds screaming out. She remembered kind, loveable dope Moritz, so if there was one thing she could prove, it was this:

 

The boy, lying cold in formal clothes and combed hair, looked nothing like Moritz.

 

Moritz was all sweaty hands and awful accents and girlish giggles. Wendla had seen less and less of these things, and less and less of Moritz in general, but she could spot an imposter from a kilometer away.

 

Moritz had curly hair which he hated combing down, the imposter’s hair was perfectly parted and gelled.

 

Moritz would always listen to her quiet ramblings, the imposter couldn’t hear a word.

 

Moritz would always blush high on his cheeks at the slightest of things, the imposter only had a welt on his cheek and no blood moving to speak of.

 

This boy in black Sunday best, laying down peacefully with arms crossed and flowers draped across his chest, was not Moritz. No matter how hard Wendla tries, she can’t see any resemblance.

 

Wendla drops the daffodil onto this imposter, cursing the tears she can feel rolling down her cheeks. 

 

She can’t wait another minute to see the real Moritz again. Wendla thinks it isn’t a sin to want to die.

 

**VII-**

 

Otto can’t remember the last time Moritz had gone out to the river with the five of them, but he can remember the sad smile he had gotten the last time he wished Moritz good morning.

 

Otto can’t remember the last time Moritz had giggled in that embarrassingly feminine way of his, but he can remember seeing Moritz’s shirtsleeves stained with dark reds when doing the wash.

 

Otto can’t remember the last time Moritz had eaten a full meal, but he can remember hearing retching during study periods.

 

Otto can’t remember enough to picture Moritz as a happy, carefree fifteen year old, but he can remember enough to picture Moritz alone in the woods with his father’s gun on his lips and gunpowder filling his lungs and the safety clicking off as loud as the trigger itself when Moritz finally-

 

Otto has nightmares, sometimes, where he ends up like Mortiz. Defeated by an enemy within himself, lost and alone in the woods with no one who cared enough to do anything about it. 

 

Otto drops the flower, not able to look directly at Moritz--Moritz’s  _ corpse _ , dear God--without seeing the images he’s conjured into his head. His imagination is overactive, picturing different ways Moritz had gone about ending his life. Sometimes he was crying and nearly drenching the gun in snot and tears, other times he had glassy eyes and almost a bored expression.

 

He can’t look at Moritz’s face, with his mouth carefully closed, without feeling his stomach creep back up his throat.

 

Otto wants to stop imagining.

 

**VII-**

 

Ilse doesn’t like to think about the fact that the only man in her life who didn’t hate her  _ hated himself, _ doesn’t like to think about the fact that she was the last one to hear his voice and she  _ ignored it _ , and most definitely doesn’t like to think about Moritz’s cold, long fingers resting on his chest, never to move again.

 

So she doesn’t.

 

**IX-**

 

Martha knew.

 

Martha knows Moritz knew Martha knew.

 

Martha knew by the way he flinched when the preacher made a broad gesture, the way his eyes didn’t quite focus on anything for too long, the way just being in the same room with Herr Stiefel made his entire attitude change.

 

She saw it in herself.

 

Moritz was a sleepyhead, with soft hair and odd manners and shaking hands and Martha loved them all. She loved talking to him, after Sunday School, about the holy book,  the wart on Frau Robel’s nose and, whenever they were feeling particularly risque, the struggles of being beaten, or starved, or kicked out, or, on good nights, screamed at. 

 

She showed him welts dancing across her skin, he showed her cigarette burns lining his forearms.

 

She showed him how to curtsey like a woman, and he showed her how to spit like a man.

 

( she didn’t show him bruises on hips and nights spent crying and the nightgowns he had her wear, and she was sure he was hiding from her too. some things are best left unsaid. )

 

Now, she would never steal minutes cleaning up the choir rows with him, she would never be able to even think of kissing his cheek goodbye, and she would never be able to tie ribbons in his hair.

 

Martha knew, and Moritz knew she knew, and Moritz was lying dead in a coffin wearing clothes big enough to be his father’s.

 

Martha drops a flower onto his chest, watches it end up lying across his neck, tickling a dark mark on his face.

 

Maybe Moritz knew more than she thought.

 

**X-**

 

Melchior can’t think outside of facts, but that’s usually what he does best. The truth is boring and short--the abridged version of life, if Melchior can say, which he can’t. Melchior hasn’t spoken out loud since the hayloft, since the gunshot waking him up beside Wendla, since the Stiefels had suddenly turned into monsters in his eyes.

 

Melchior simply doesn’t have the time to think outside of the box, anymore.

 

Moritz is dead, which is a fact. Moritz had gone from the state of inhaling and exhaling and feeling to the state of death.

 

Another fact is that Melchior had known this was inevitable. One far away day, all of them would be dead and unknown to the world.

 

The far away day just happened to be in Moritz’s junior year, another fact.

 

Moritz had complained about his father to Melchior before. Fact.

 

Melchior had brushed him off. Fact.

 

Moritz was dead. Fact.

 

Moritz is dead because of Melchior. Fact.

 

Melchior reels in his mind, pausing in his walk toward the daffodils. That wasn’t a fact, really, and Melchior isn’t stupid enough to think it is. Moritz is dead because Moritz stole his father's gun and shot himself in the forest. Fact.

 

Fact. Melchior walked towards the end of the coffin, not meeting Herr Stiefel’s eyes. 

 

( _ “We all hate our parents a little, Moritz, it’s called teenage resentment. Everything they say seems like life or death” _ )

 

Fact. Moritz was wearing long sleeves constantly, and now he will in the afterlife, too.

 

( _ “Christ, that’s a big one- what happened there? You’ve really got to watch where you’re going, Moritz, I swear.” _ )

 

Fact. Melchior was the last person other than Herr Stiefel to let loose a flower into Moritz’s grave.

 

(“ _ Moritz, you can’t stay the night at my house every time your old man yells at you or something” _ )

 

Fact, Melchior doesn’t stay long enough to watch him drop to his son’s grave, afraid of what he’ll see.

 

Afraid of what he’s been ignoring.


End file.
